


Acceptance

by bickazer



Series: Magus Verse [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Ambition, Angst, Bathing/Washing, Bigotry & Prejudice, Character Study, Corporal Punishment, Dom/sub, Fantasy, Folklore, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Magic Users, Royalty, court intrigue, domestic abuse, men in makeup, soulbonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-05
Updated: 2017-06-05
Packaged: 2018-11-09 09:15:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11101494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bickazer/pseuds/bickazer
Summary: A ministra is supposed to submit to his energos. A ministra is supposed to accept everything his energos gives him.Aramy Basquiale refuses. What he is given, he will pay back a thousand times.





	Acceptance

**Author's Note:**

> It took me several months to finally bash out this story, but I've always wanted to write it. This is yet another story in my Magus Verse, and you can consider it a direct sequel to Aethereal. 
> 
> The Magus Verse is a world where magic users are divided into two castes, the dominant energi and the submissive ministra. On my fictionpress account (where I'm also known as bickazer), you can find a much longer story set in this world. It's called Alone, Together and it's 50 chapters long, so yeah, you can see why I'm not porting it over. It's all about what happens to Aramy in the year since this little oneshot.

"My name is Aramy Basquiale, and I am the Prince's Consort."

Maybe if he spoke it aloud, it'd actually sound true. It'd sound like it had actual meaning, like the words held actual power.

The Prince's Consort. Aramy huffed back a laugh. What a title.

He took a deep breath and stepped through the archway into the bathing chamber. As he entered, rose-scented steam swirled around him. It released some of the tension in his body - not quite enough.

Aramy walked carefully across the damp tiles, mindful not to trip. He glanced around, quickly checking to make sure the room was prepared according to his specifications. Little brass-plated racks holding glass bottles of oils and lotions surrounded the pool sunken in the center of the chamber, ten feet across and filled with steaming water. The mirrors along the walls were all covered with velvet curtains - as was the altar to the First Consort Etherio, recessed into the opposite wall.

A slight smile twitched Aramy's lips, but he could still feel the eyes of the altar's small statue peering through the cloth.

Aramy looked away.

A Silent Servant knelt beside the pool, checking its temperature. He looked up when Aramy approached. He was a round-faced Mountainlander boy, red-haired and freckled. Aramy's personal attendant. The concern in his eyes sent a helpless fury crawling up Aramy's throat. Perhaps the boy couldn't talk, but his meaning was clear enough.

Aramy waved a hand, dismissing the boy without a word. The servant straightened, but hesitated for a moment. Aramy glared. The boy quickly padded out of the bathing chamber.

The day when he accepted a Silent Servant's pity was the day he had truly lost his dignity.

Not that he had much right now. Prince's Consort. Ha. What did it even mean when the only people he truly commanded were his serving staff?

Drawing in a deep breath, Aramy reached for the front of his linen underrobe. He had already stripped off the rest of his layers of white and scarlet silks and washed off his makeup. His armor and warpaint were all gone, but still he hesitated.

Weakness. Savagely, he pulled the robe open and shrugged it off his shoulders.

Now he was naked. The air was warm, so he wasn't uncomfortable, but his skin prickled anyway. As he marched toward the pool, he became more aware than ever of the throbbing across the entire lower half of his body.

Aramy gritted his teeth. _This is nothing._

He slipped into the water. There were two shallow steps leading into the pool, and Aramy descended as quickly as he could. He couldn't help letting out a relieved sigh as the water caressed him, leaching some of the pain from his muscles. The water flowed from the complex system of pipes beneath the palace, pumping in water from the Senriver and running through several chambers kept heated by fire magi.

Aramy's feet settled onto the mosaic floor, toes digging into the grooves between the tiles. Now he was up to his chin in the water.

How he wanted to bask here forever, suspended in this warm, weightless void - but he was never the type to run away and hide. He had a task to accomplish.

Aramy reached for a sea sponge and a bottle of his favorite soap, a bubbly kind scented of melon and mint. As he grabbed the items, his gaze landed on the faint purplish marks encircling his wrists. They were almost faded, but on his pale skin any discoloration showed up starkly. If he looked closely, he could make out shapes, the impressions of long fingers....

_And he was feeling those fingers pressing into his skin again, the prince pinning his wrists down upon the bed, his grip tight and possessive like he never wanted to let go...._

Aramy breathed in sharply. No. He couldn't get lost in memory now. Finish the task. Quick and simple.

He squeezed the soap onto the sponge and began scrubbing himself furiously, his shoulders and back and chest and throat. The smell of mint mixed with roses, quite pleasant. He focused on it. Not on the bite marks beneath his collarbone, or the scratches along his ribs, or the last remnants of the bruise over his stomach from when -

_When the prince had pushed down upon him, fury blazing in his blue eyes, demanding, "You don't want to do it? Too bad, you're my ministra so you have to obey me!"_

_And then the prince grabbed his hips and turned him around and Aramy bit the sheets to keep himself from crying out, and though it probably lasted less than ten minutes it felt like a torturous eternity for him...._

"Enough," Aramy said aloud, a rough whisper that died quickly in the humid air. With quick strokes, he swam over to the steps and gingerly seated himself. Like this, he could wash his legs more easily. As he stretched out his left leg, he tried to avoid looking at the underside of his thigh, the livid red marks like stripes on a tiger.

But sooner or later, he had to wash there. It took more nerve than he'd like to admit to move the sponge to the marred skin, and he bit down a hiss as he pressed against one of the weals. Then, furious, he scrubbed as hard as he could. It didn't hurt. It didn't.

_Not compared to the moment when it was happening, as he bent over the armchair and clung to the mahogany frame for dear life and the strap was whistling through the air, landing with cracks as loud as gunshots..._

Aramy couldn't help it. A familiar helpless fury welled inside him, burning hot and prickling and making him feel only seconds from exploding. He scrubbed harder.

Wrong. This was wrong. This wasn't how a ministra was supposed to feel after being chastised by his energos. Punishment was supposed to be a release, a way for energos and ministra to wipe clean the slate between them, to start anew....

Aramy honestly had no inherent problem with taking a punishment from his bonded. Though his parents had been the hands-off sort, they'd given him the strap on more than one occasion, and so he had his teachers when he'd come to the royal palace. While he never felt the calm bliss a ministra was supposed to feel after punishment - and all for good reason, because it would be mighty strange to feel that way for anyone besides one's bonded energos - he had accepted it and counted each one as richly deserved. And he had vowed to do better for next time.

It was logical. It made sense. But this... _this_....

Aramy simply could not help but feel that he hadn't done anything to deserve it. Oh, the prince had explained his reasons well enough: " _How dare you address Lord Pavos before me! Never ignore me for another energos again!"_

As he scrubbed, Aramy forced himself to relive each lash of the strap, the searing pain of leather impacting skin. One, two, three, four, five, all the way up to fifteen. With each lash the prince had demanded, _"Who is first in your heart?"_

_"You, Your Highness," he choked out._

Yes, he supposed a ministra should consider his energos before anyone else, but - but, it wasn't like he _had_ actually ignored the prince in favor of Lord Pavos. Lord Pavos had simply asked him a question, and Aramy had answered. Perhaps in some particularly strict places like the Mountainlands, a ministra wasn't supposed to address another energos in the first place, but in that case Lord Pavos was the one who had broken protocol by talking to Aramy first. And this was Azed Court, where they were much more relaxed about this sort of thing.

Such a small, silly thing. He wanted to choke on his frustration. He just - he felt that the punishment had been _excessive_. It wasn't _fair_.

A harsh laugh bubbled out of Aramy's throat. Was he still a child, whining because his brother the heir got all the nice clothes and toys first? Even so. Even so...

He slid down from the steps and sank back into the warm water, resting his head against the edge of the pool. Gazing up at the ceiling, painted with a mural of Etherio wrapped in the arms of the First Energos Azed, he found himself remembering a story his ministra father had told him once, on one of the rare occasions when the man had taken an interest in his upbringing.

Yes, it was a story about Etherio. One every ministra growing up in Senero surely must have heard. It went like this:

_"Once upon a time," Aramy's ministra father said, gazing down at him with the scarlet eyes they both shared, "Etherio and Azed were living near a Marren market. At that time, Etherio started to miss the fruits of his native country. He begged Azed to let him go to the market, but Azed refused. Etherio didn't understand why. So one day, he disobeyed his energos. He sneaked out of their house and went to the market, and there he got attacked and robbed. Though Etherio managed to defeat his assailants, he learned an important lesson about obeying his energos. It might not always seem that way, but the energos truly does know best."_

His ministra father had told him the sanitized version of the tale, of course. The Whipping of Etherio, it was called, and for good reason. Indeed, the altar statue depicted the end result of the story in lovingly carved detail: Etherio on his knees, arms and legs bound with ropes, a gag in his mouth, whiplashes criss-crossing his back, and the most adoring, simpering look of utmost submission in his eyes.

Even through the heavy velvet covering, Aramy visualized the statue perfectly. He ground his back teeth.

Of course, after the punishment Etherio and Azed made up and Etherio vowed to always submit to and obey his energos, and Azed had forgiven him, and then they had glorious make-up sex. Well, the tales were coy about the last part, but Aramy was sure that was how it ended.

He'd heard the story enough times. From his teachers in the royal palace, from the other young ministra. He'd read it in the texts he'd been forced to study, treatises about proper ministra behavior. All of it pounded one lesson in his head: _The energos always knows best._

So - so - so he'd been punished for the first time by his own energos. No need to feel so much damned _resentment_. Even if he couldn't understand his energos' reasoning at all, that must mean the punishment hadn't chastised him enough, right? Aramy just needed to learn to be a good ministra and accept it.

He knew, oh how he knew, what he'd been getting into. He knew full well the vow he had made. _"I promise to submit to you from now until the end of my days. I will kneel to you and obey your every order and give everything I have to you, my energos and master."_

But even as he swore it, he had sworn another vow. A silent one for only himself to know.

_I promise that one day I will stand at the top of all of Senero. This is only the first step._

It was wrong, it wasn't good and submissive of him, to believe that his energos was a fool and had no reasonable grounds for punishing him. _The energos always knows best._ No, he didn't. He _didn't_. Aramy thought this with a certainty that pulsed through his entire body, stronger than a heartbeat.

Even as a child, he'd resented Etherio in that tale. He'd wondered why Etherio had been so stupid, so silly, so petty. It was like people expected ministra to be that way. Eventually Aramy had manifested as a ministra and he noticed that people did treat him differently from his elder brother, and not just because his brother was the heir. They spoke sweetly to him. Called him pretty and cute. Laughed and shooed him away whenever he tried to join a serious conversation.

If Etherio was the model of ideal ministra behavior, then Aramy understood exactly what people expected of ministra. Pretty, empty-headed fools.

And another voice spoke to him, louder than that of the prince, his ministra father, all of the teachers he'd ever had. It was the voice of the girl who had first taken him under her wing and mentored him in the palace.

 _"Get this in your head, Aramy. We are not weak. Ministra are_ not _weak. I don't ever want you to believe it."_

Her words resounded in Aramy's chest with a stark certainty that he did not feel when he thought about the tale, his energos' lectures and remonstrances last night. Yes. This was the truth, even if the entire world tried to tell him otherwise.

Etherio was a good ministra who submitted and quietly accepted everything his energos gave him. Well, Aramy wasn't like that.

He had seen well enough what happened when ministra abandoned their sense of self and put everything in their energos' hands. His ministra father was a presence like a fading picture, so silent and still it was easy to forget he was even there. The Royal Consort was lazy and indolent, never acting, only reacting. Etherio was an idiot. And the first friend Aramy had ever made in the royal palace, that vibrant golden-haired boy, he'd given and given and given so much that in the end, he'd had nothing left, and the image of his lifeless body still haunted Aramy's dreams all these years later.

Aramy refused to end up like them. He _refused_.

He pounded his fist against the side of the pool. The impact jumped through his bones, but he didn't care. It didn't hurt nearly as much as the marks from the strap.

"I do not accept this," he said, loud and clear. "What I am given, I will not accept without a word. What I am given, I will pay it back a thousand times!"

He had already gotten revenge for his friend's death; the energos responsible would never return to the palace again. From then on, Aramy had understood. There was power in standing up for yourself, in refusing to fold. It intoxicated him. And made him decide he was never going to be weak again. He was going to be as strong as possible, with the power to reward his allies to their hearts' content, to punish his enemies exactly as much as they deserved.

This was why he had bonded with the prince. He could never lose sight of his goal.

When people looked at ministra, they might only see Etherio, foolish and short-sighted. But they didn't know what lay beneath. And it was those who weren't noticed who might well blossom into the brightest flowers.

If people couldn't _see_ you, then they could never anticipate your moves.

A smirk curved up Aramy's lips. He still felt the pain, but it was muted. Perhaps the hot water was having its effect, or perhaps it just didn't matter much anymore. The prince had given him this. Well, he would give it back a thousand times.

Aramy spread out his white hair behind him, letting it float in the water like a wind-blown curtain of silk. As he busied himself washing his hair, he let himself imagine a scene far sweeter than all of his memories earlier, than all of the tales he'd been told in his life.

_The thud of the falling axe. The prince's head bouncing before rolling to a forlorn stop. Crimson blood. Handsome features twisted into a terrified grimace._

For now Aramy would accept this, all of the punishments, all of the belittling. It was his lot as Prince's Consort. He would accept it, but he would never let it go, not like sweet, stupid Etherio. No. He would remember each lash and strike and assault, keeping careful tally in his heart, and one day it would be too late for anyone to stop him.

The prince least of all.

**Author's Note:**

> To find out if Aramy gets his revenge or not, go on and read Alone, Together, winkwink.


End file.
